Just How Is It To Be Done?

Published:First published inPravdaNo. 95, July 13 (June 30), 1917.

      Published according to thePravdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 25,

      pages145-147.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.  

      2002You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

RabochayaGazetais disturbed about thepoliticalsignificance of the offensive. One of its
      contributors even reproaches another, saying that the latter’s
      evasive phrases ultimately amount to an admission that,
      objectively, the Russian revolutionary army is now shedding its
      blood for the annexationist plans of the Allied bourgeoisie
      rather than for peace without annexations(Rabochaya
      GazetaNo. 93, page 2, column 1).

Nowthis “objective” significance of the offensive
      is bound to disturb the workers, some of whom are still
      following the Mensheviks. And this is also reflected in the
      columns ofRabochaya Gazeta.Not wishing to venture upon
      an open break with the workers, the paper is trying to somehow
      link the “offensive” with the revolutionary
      proletarian peace struggle. Unfortunately for the cunning
      editors, the only connection that can be established here is anegativeone.

Itwould be difficult to imagine more pitiful and confused
      people than these respectable editors frightened by those very
      spirits which they, together with the Socialist-Revolutionaries,
      have conjured up.

Onthe one hand,Rabochaya Gazetareports that
      “the West now sees the significance of the Russian
      offensive in an entirely false light. The British and French
      bourgeois news papers regard it as a renunciation of the
      Soviet’s ’utopian’ plans. Chauvinist resolutions are being
      passed under the pretext of hailing Kerensky and the advancing
      revolutionaryarmy. And while the war drums thunder for the
      Russian offensive, the persecution of those who hold the same
      views as the Russian democrats and accept the same peace policy
      is growing”.

Avery valuable admission! All the more so because it comes from
      a ministerial newspaper which only yesterday

      considered our forecasts of theseinevitableconsequences of the offensive to be prompted by Bolshevik
      malice. It turns out that the question is not of our
      “malice” at all, but of the fact that the policy
      adopted by the leaders of the Soviet has its ownlogicand that this logic leads to the strengthening of theanti-revolutionary forcesin and outside Russia.

Itis this unpleasant fact thatRabochaya Gazetawould
      like to gloss over somehow. The method suggested by the editors
      is very simple: “It is urgently necessary that the Central
      Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets of Workers
      and Soldiers’ Deputies, together with the Soviet of Peasants’
      Deputies, should issue an explicit and categorical statement to
      the effect that, as far as Russian democrats are concerned, the
      aims of the war remain the same as before”, and so on, and
      so forth. You see how resolutely the Mensheviks fight against
      the imperialist war: they are willing to make another urgent and
      categorical statement. The number of the most
      “urgent”, most “categorical”, and most
      “impassioned” statements that have already been
      made! How many more times will it be necessary to repeat those
      categorical statements as speedily as possible to moderate with
      words, if only a little, theactionsof a government
      which the ministerialRabochaya Gazetafully supports!

Really,gentlemen, your most “categorical” words,
      declarations and notes cannot alleviate the facts which you
      yourselves report. Those facts can only be countered byactionswhich wouldactuallymark a break
      with the policy of continuing theimperialistwar. The government of
      Lvov-Tereshchenko-Shingaryov-Kerensky-Tsereteli cannot do
      that. All it can
      do is confirm, by its cowardly and pitiful policy towards
      Finland and the Ukraine, its complete inability to carry out its
      most “categorical” statements about “no
      annexations” and about the “right” to
      self-determination. Under these circumstances, all those
      promised declarations willserve as a means of lulling the
      people. Lulling the people with high-sounding declarations
      instead of waging a “proletarian peace
      struggle"—this isRabochaya Gazeta’sprogramme,
      this is its real answer to the growth of the anti-revolutionary
      forces due to the offensive.